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NBA: Could Cavaliers become Canuck Dream Team?

Andrew Wiggins. Tristan Thompson. Anthony Bennett. It may not be realistic, but the possibility of seeing three Canadians on the same team — perhaps with LeBron James back in the fold — must have southern Ontario basketball fans salivating.

Toronto's Andrew Wiggins could well wind up in Cleveland if the Cavaliers, with the No. 1 pick, select him in the NBA draft. (Charles Rex Arbogast / The Associated Press)

The Golden Age of Canadian basketball could play out on the southern shore of Lake Erie, a scant four-hour drive from the GTA, with a combination of the NBA’s most dynamic player and the most anxiously awaited Canadian talent joining forces.

It would take a perfect storm of events that began with the draft lottery and would have to continue with the repatriation of a former Cleveland icon and it might not make the greatest of basketball sense but the thought of some Canuck Golden Team so close must have southern Ontario basketball fans salivating.

Two of the new-age stalwarts of a growing Canadian NBA presence serving in auxiliary roles?

Realistic? Maybe, maybe not.

But it is certainly a plausible scenario that would usher in a wonderful era for the game and the league in this region.

The Cavaliers made it all possible with an unlikely and unexpected bit of luck in Tuesday’s draft lottery, moving up from ninth in the lottery (with a 1.7 per cent chance) to nab their third No. 1 pick in the last four years.

It created a dizzying series of events for fans in this region who immediately imagined Wiggins being virtually in their backyard to begin what some see as a potentially incredible NBA career.

For the biggest of dreamers, it went even further.

There has never been an NBA team with three Canadians on its roster, let alone three with such promising futures as Wiggins, the 6-foot-8 swingman from Kansas, Brampton’s Tristan Thompson, a solid young big man, and Toronto’s Anthony Bennett, the surprise No. 1 draft pick a year ago who struggled through a disastrous rookie season.

Toss in all-star guard Kyrie Irving and a coaching vacancy that should attract interest from every significant unemployed coach out there.

But it is the other shoe — and the possibility of James returning to a solid young core that would include Wiggins — that has tongues wagging.

James and Wiggins have ties that go far beyond this week’s lottery or the fall’s coming season. The Canadian prodigy wowed James with his shocking athleticism as far back as 2012, when a 16-year-old Wiggins was at a James-sanctioned academy and the two have become, if not fast friends, at least close buddies over the years. Wiggins met James in the hallway of the Air Canada Centre after one Miami-Toronto game and they have remained in touch.

Would a chance to partner with such a dynamic talent as Wiggins be enough to convince James, an Ohio native who maintains a residence close to Cleveland, to return?

Indeed, the toughest part of the whole scenario might be the Cavs being able to entice James back to the franchise he so publicly forsook four years ago when he famously “took his talents” to South Beach.

The Cavaliers do have the salary-cap room to sign James with no problem but it would take James deciding to exercise an option to leave the Miami Heat after this season. He has given no indication which way he is leaning and the determining factor could very well be how the Heat fare in the search for a third consecutive NBA title with the Big Three of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

But from a pure basketball perspective, given the current Cavaliers roster, does a James-Wiggins pairing even make sense?

James is unquestionably able to play any position on the floor but Cleveland already has a dynamic point guard in Irving and might be better set with a 7-foot centre like Joel Embiid to give a more balanced look to someone of James’s stature.

Taking Embiid No. 1 in that scenario might be a gamble in that the Cavs do have a gaping hole on the wing — the Luol Deng experiment was an unabashed failure since Cleveland didn’t even seriously sniff a playoff spot last year — and with the NBA morphing more into a position-less game where multi-faceted players are coveted more than anything, a James-Irving-Wiggins triumvirate might be unstoppable.

But even without the coupling of James and Wiggins, some sudden return to relevance of the Cavaliers should buoy the interests of southern Ontario basketball fans.

In the perfect world — and it was the dream of Raptors fans for months before the 2013-14 season became so much fun — Wiggins would have been in Toronto next season.

However, the thought of him alongside longtime friends Thompson and Bennett should give fans in this area a second team to root for, and a better chance at seeing them often.The Cavaliers were 15th in NBA attendance in the just-completed season, averaging 17,329 per game but only about 84 per cent capacity at the Quicken Loans Arena; the Raptors were 10th in the league, averaging 18,252 at home, about 92 per cent capacity.

It would make it easy for fans in this area to adopt a team with significant Canadian content and a promising future.

It would be unlikely to carve into the inroads the resurgent Raptors made in their breakthrough 2013-14 season but three Canadians — and who knows what else — provides an easy “second favourite” team.

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